Friday, April 11, 2008

In the arousal of harsh condemnation from several parts of the society, several unions of employees and officers as well as arms and police forces over the issue of sixth pay commission’s report, the Union Cabinet in a meeting on Friday approved to constitute an Empowered Committee of Secretaries to review the submitted report of sixth pay commission.

‘The Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar would be the head of the 12-member screening committee’, said Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal to the reporters after the cabinet meeting.

The Empowered Committee would screen the report thoroughly and deeply and finally table its final recommendation before the union cabinet to consider over it.

Moreover, Cabinet has already set up a grievance committee headed by Finance Secretary D Subbarao to look in to all sorts of complaint regarding pay commission’s recommendation.

The government is facing sharp criticism from employees (weather lower level or higher level); the police staff and IPS officers, the defence department and most of the employee sections over inadequate and uneven pay recommendation with argue that the implementation of this recommendation would encourage the disparities among different sections of government employees.

Earlier, as per norms government had set up a four-member committee headed by Justice B N Srikrishna to submit its recommendation report to the cabinet after analysing several factors that influence the salary structure.

The Sixth Pay Panel had submitted its report to government on March 24, 2008 recommending up to 40% salary hike from the current level. But, as per critics: ‘this report favours the ‘babus’ and bureaucrats the most and salary increment rises at much higher rate with the hierarchy.’

For Example, as per sixth pay commission, the central cabinet secretary, the top bureaucrats will get a fixed salary of Rs.90,000 and secretaries will get Rs. 80,000/- per month while the Group D level employee will get only Rs. 6,600 at the beginning level. This recommendation would cost the exchequer over Rs 12,000 crore, if the cabinet approves it in its present form.

Protesting this salary recommendation, a confederation representing employees of ordinance factory, income tax, postal department, railways, customs, excise and other central government offices have decided to submit a MoU carrying their grievances to the Personnel Department very soon while Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor and Chairman and Chiefs of Staff Committee Admiral Sureesh Mehta had met Defence Minister A K Antony and submitted a joint proposals on the recommendations of pay commission.